The free for all in YouTube may soon come to an end. The popular website has decided to introduce recognition technology from September to prevent uploading of copyrighted videos. A lawyer representing YouTube told a United States court hearing a copyright case that the company was planning to deploy recognition technology which akin to the one used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The new technology would help the website to quickly identify digital fingerprints on copyrighted videos and shut them down within a minute. At present, hundreds of thousands of videos of all kinds are indiscriminately uploaded in every day.
HCL’s new range of desktop computers contains chipmaker Intel’s latest high-tech quad-core processor. This is akin to a machine having four brains working in tandem. Needless to say, this increases the performance range of the PC several fold, something that inveterate gamers and multimedia professionals were longing for. HCL is the first to launch desktops on quad-core platform in India. The PCs are priced between Rs 40,000 and Rs 90,000. Intel claims that apart from delivering greater performance, quad-core processors will also cut power consumption by as much as 40 per cent.
Microsoft has sold about 60 million copies of its new operating system Vista until now. Unveiling the latest sales figures, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner said in a none-too-subtle manner that in the first five weeks after its launch, Vista had overtaken the entire installed base of rival Apple. Turner’s upbeat announcement comes after wide speculation in the media that Vista was not doing well. Laptop maker Acer recently stated openly that most of the industry was disappointed by Vista. Analysts are not too impressed by the latest sales figures either since they include the 42 million computers covered under volume license agreements. Vista had sold 20 million copies the month after its launch. After that, sales had levelled out probably because of reports about teething problems. It seems that slow and steady pace is continuing
The Windows Genuine Advantage tool developed by Microsoft has helped sleuths to bust the biggest ever software piracy racket. Under WGA, users have to validate their operating system with Microsoft to update software. This helped MS detect lots of pirated versions of its programmes. Making use of this data, the FBI the other day busted the China-based racket which had distributed pirated Windows software worth $2 billion in more than 27 countries. CDs of pirated software worth $500 million were seized from the racket’s base in Guandong province. It had been bringing out and selling pirated versions of Microsoft’s popular products including Windows Vista and MS Office 2007.
Major PC manufacturer Acer has expressed deep disappointment with Microsoft’s latest operating system Windows Vista. Acer’s chief Gianfranco Lanci told a newspaper that the entire industry was disappointed by Vista though he was the first person to say it openly. Acer is the fourth largest PC maker in the world. Vista has had a slow start and Microsoft has been pushing it.
Stung by criticism on their hostility to privacy, major search engines are now shortening the time span in which they will retain user data relating to searches. Microsoft said the other day that it will retain search information only for 18 months. This follows Google’s announcement a few weeks ago that it would restrict data retention to 24 months at the most. Another popular search engine, Ask.com, went a step further and has said that it would give users the option to erase data soon after a search. Yahoo is also expected to announce its policy to restrict data only for 13 months soon. The flurry of announcements have come in the wake of sharp attacks on Google by privacy advocates who said it could build up psychological profiles of users with all the data retained in its various applications.
Africa is still a dark continent as far as Internet connectivity is concerned. Latest reports point out that less than four percent of the continent’s population is connected to the Web and majority of them are in South Africa. Even the meagre infrastructure in many countries of Africa had been destroyed in civil conflicts and this has hampered connectivity. As of now, even an email message from an African country has to be routed through United States or Britain, jacking up costs heavily. About 75 per cent of Africa’s Internet traffic is carried out with the help of others.
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